Media/Policy Watch

Media/Policy Watch
This watch section is intended to alert readers to substantive news, analysis and opinion from the general media and selected think tanks and similar organizations on vaccines, immunization, global public health and related themes. Media Watch is not intended to be exhaustive, but indicative of themes and issues CVEP is actively tracking. This section will grow from an initial base of newspapers, magazines and blog sources, and is segregated from Journal Watch above which scans the peer-reviewed journal ecology.
We acknowledge the Western/Northern bias in this initial selection of titles and invite suggestions for expanded coverage. We are conservative in our outlook in adding news sources which largely report on primary content we are already covering above. Many electronic media sources have tiered, fee-based subscription models for access. We will provide full-text where content is published without restriction, but most publications require registration and some subscription level.The Atlantichttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/Accessed 16 December 201740 Years Later, Some Survivors of the First Ebola Outbreak Are Still ImmuneThe antibodies in their blood might hold the key to future vaccines.
Ed Yong, Dec 14, 2017

AKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesia is immunizing millions of children and teenagers against diphtheria after the disease killed 38 people, mostly children, since January.

Children in school uniforms and toddlers clinging to their parents received shots at a high school in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, on the first day of the campaign Monday.

Diphtheria is a bacterial disease that can cause breathing difficulties, heart failure and paralysis. It was more or less eradicated in Indonesia in the 1990s but health officials say it has re-emerged in the past four years because immunization rates have dropped, partly reflecting fears about vaccines.

The first stage of the $112 million campaign aims to vaccinate 8 million people under the age of 19 in Jakarta and the populous provinces of Banten and West Java.

The outbreak is “likely due to some people refusing immunization which causes their children’s antibodies and resistance to be low,” Health Minister Nila Moeloek said after visiting a hospital where more than more than 30 diphtheria patients were being treated…